I haven't been as religious with my blogging duties as i should ... I'm not sure if i will keep it up in the future , but if i dont blog about anything, i MUST, in spite of the mountains of work to get through ... and for the sake of peace of mind ( yes i have been queried by many lool, thanks for pushing me to do this again) , i must keep on tellin The Orbit Story.
Its something i've tried to do over the years. Telling our story in a very objective and unbiased way at least once every year to whoever cares to read, or needs a bit of motivation doing what they do. I'm hoping this can give you a little push in the right direction.
For those of us that are new to The Orbit Story let me drop some links below to the other articles and a brief description.
The Orbit Story (The Beginning) : ( 2011) This tells the story of how we started Orbit Imagery our growing photography agency with a small camera, some cane and a bit of shiny cloth .
The Orbit Story .... A Year Later :(2012) Basically picks up from where the last post left it ( DUH! ) lol. How things began to get better. The Occupy Movement , The Dana Air Crash , and my promise to post another update in 12 months ... .... even though i'm posting something more than 24 months later lol..
And now
The Orbit Story ... A New Horizon.
Before i begin , i just want to reiterate, that i will not be speaking out of any emotions .. i will be fully objective, come clean , no bias .. loool cos this story kinda reads like Telemundo ... but it ends beautifully.
So first things first , lets get the tough part out of the way...
One of our number left, and up till now i don't even know why.. and apart from the many rumors and stories and bad things that were said about the whole situation, the rest of us chose to move on and keep searching for the Orbit dream as originally intended.
I didn't take it well initially, i couldn't understand and i felt betrayed, but i would've been lying to myself if i said that i didn't expect something like that to happen at least once along the line.
People come and go for too many reasons to count, your job is to keep on moving despite or inspite of the pain or hardship it may bring. that was my first lesson in 2013.
I didn't know what was going to happen, I didn't know how it was going to happen, all i knew was , if it was ever going to happen , it would be through hard work and prayer, not by getting bitter and anxious, lol there was enough bitterness to shame the best that Chloroquine had to offer but there was grace that helped to let it go. And now all i wish is the best for him and everyone that was brave enough to pick up anything ... talkless of a camera and chase their dreams , because the reality is, its not easy at all.
So off we went into 2013, I was expecting the same old challenges, but most had come to trust us more than we could imagine, and with that , new challenges came up, some of which were so tough , that they brought out qualities in us that we didn't know we had.
Lets breeze through the highlights
Victor's Workshop
It was an insane experience .. the fact that we got sponsors in the first place kinda blew my mind , but i had to play it cool .. i mean we did a radio tour , that was the last thing i was expecting when we decided to push this workshop. We had so much help from 3RA'FIQUE COMMUNOCATIONS . Well i went to school with the owner anyways lol, and we have a very good business relationship as well. Irabor Okosun and his team simply asked us why we were stressing ourselves lol, and with blinding speed put together a radio tour and a massive amount of publicity, the way it was going, Victor was even getting cold feet. It went well all in all, i mean looking at all the brands that supported and motivated us to pull through , there was, in reality little chance of failure. Eva Alordiah's Make Up By Orsela , Nigeria Info , Rhythm 93.7 , Uncle Femi's Afrika Shrine , Silverbird TV , Mystreetz Magazine , City 105.1 , Cool FM 96.9 , WTW PR.
Thank You.
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| Hugging Omalicha |
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| Some of our Attendees . L-R Tobi , Mr Alfred , Janet , Diko , Tokunbo and Tobi |
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| Jiving with Janet |
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| Speaking With Igos |
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| The Winning Picture Of Femi Kuti by Tobi Odedina |
The only issue i had was with the emails we got, i thought i had replied them all , only to find out that there was a bug in our mail server and almost all the replies that were sent didn't get through.
Although we ended up with a good amount of attendees and the workshop itself was tons of fun , it was a little disappointing to receive mail after mail , call after call, text after text from people that really wanted to come. Im sorry .. We will be better next time. Come to think of it, we are planning one soon , but this time it won't be just Victor, Emmanuel Oyeleke , Aham Ibeleme , Laila Rahman and Ikechukwu Okwechime will be coming on board .. i will be introducing them later, thats if they need one in the first place lol.. awesome people.
We took on a fledgeling photographer before the workshop . Emily Nkanga . Awesome lady from The American University of Nigeria . She came over for "industrial training" , and somehow we managed to turn a meek nice girl into a crazy person haha .. We Love You Emily .. See you soon :-D .
A Lot happened but i obviously can't type it all out,
What i will say is, most of what happened revolved around meeting these people, they seemed to have showed up miraculously at certain points when their presence was required . How it happened , i don't know, let me explain .
For example , The Image Project this was something we put together to take the financial load off people that are still up and coming in the entertainment industry . we slashed our prices and the response was incredible . Before we started we realized that we will need extra hands with publicity and photographing the attendees, all of a sudden, Aham and Laila showed up and we pulled it off.
Many more stories like that happened over the course of the year, but the big one that happened much later was what blew my mind.
We finally got a call from a humongous client , and i was asked to come over for a presentation . i Kakked my suit and all , went over, i didn't have a slide because there was no way to express what i wanted to pass across with a slide , i decided to speak from the nibd i guess and be objective truthful .
I got there , and the competition i met was enough to make me start reconsidering , they had slides and beautiful pictures and oozing of awesomeness and i just had my iPad and a look of terror on my face .
I put myself together though , got into the room ........ i was expecting to see a conference table and a couple of chairs .... the regular stuff .. OMO it was far from regular , there was a small stage and some cinema like seats and a good amount of people sitting in them , different ages , different ideas , one unanimous look of "OKAY WHO IS NEXT" on their faces .
One of them walked up, i shifted back, trying to hide behind another presenter, i actually wanted him to go first cos i hadn't done anything this big before , i wanted to take notes, but i came on time , and he didnt ...... "Please wait outside sir, its Ayobami's time) ... in my mind i was like EWOOOOO!!! , i struggled to put myself together , slowly walked up the stage , unbuttoned my suit , dropped my iPad, said a little prayer , and kicked off..
Long story short, we ended up getting the job. We needed someone that was very versed in printing and graphics and just like that Ikechukwu Okwechime walked in and handled it with speed everything was going good , but with jobs like that , the client wouldn't entrust you with such a large amount of money from the start with legitimate fear that you might run away , so we had no option but to look for a loan. We got the news rather late and after using a lot of time reverting and changing specifications to meet the clients demands we didn't have any time left. we needed that loan ASAP, hope was minimal.
That same day after we got our final approval we went over to our printers to negotiate price and by chance we met the owner of the press.. He couldn't believe that these very young boys were the ones that our client had trusted to handle the task, he simply told us to go submit our design to the printing crew downstairs , and he would handle the costs. That was the first time i had met him in my life , its cliche i know but God Works In Mysterious Ways . And just like that everything fell into place within 24 hours without us even lifting a finger. It was so taking , that if we didn't have IK Aham Victor and Me to handle it , we would've failed our client was even the one that put us through in places where we were inexperienced .... .. its a long story... lemmie move on . But before i do . This picture should explain it all .
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| Union Bank Calendar 2014 |
So many things happened.
We started a new journey into film making , Music Videos as well as Feature Length Films . We came in late to this one though.. have you seen THE MISFIT ?
It it had a decent run in cinemas across the country and should be out on VCD soon .... and yes, i've waited all my life so say this for real so...................
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| GRAB YA COPY .... NOWWWWWW! |
We are so proud to be a part of this .. It made it to the Nollywood Film Festival in Paris ..
We are working on another movie tho but I'm not at liberty to discuss. let our partners not kill us.
Oh Yea, Always been a huge fan of Stephen Keshi, and i got the chance to meet him when he came over for a photoshoot .
We even covered the #BringBackOurGirls Protest
Thankfully CNN got a hold of the pictures and aired them live
.. So nobody should come tomorrow and say Orbit did not do its part lol.
Let me fast forward our most recent project .
So we went on this tour of Nigeria, specifically from the Idanre Hills in Ondo, to The Confluence in Kogi, Zuma Rock in Minna and Gurara falls in Niger . I , Aham Ibeleme and Oyeleke Seun
Ondo was great, however they love palm oil too much there , it was in all their food, and it was super strong, needless to say, we respected ourselves and stuck to eating fast food.
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| Seun and Aham Idanre Hills |
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| Me.... Lol Idanre Hills |
Kogi was HOT! , everyone got a tan, even the darkest one of us lol
Gurara falls, MAGNIFICENT ! went for a swim chilled under the waterfall, met some great people, it was awesome.
We got to Zuma rock tho, and the first thing that happened was, some guy comes walking towards us briskly with a shine cutlass, omo everyone braced themselves for a confrontation... turns out , he wasn't there to chop us up into tiny bits, he came to warn us of the instability in the area, how they've killed people and buried them at the foot of Zuma rock and stuff... and like in a thriller movie, we ignored him lol.
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| Seun at the foot of Zuma Rock |
Everything was going great, we got mad shots, but on our way back to the hotel, we got confronted by two soldiers.
Unfortunately , i was filming our journey and couldn't make any sudden moves to switch off the camera cos they had guns and all, i simply raised my hands and did what they said..
Apparently , they thought we were spies from Boko Haram , and decided to force a confession out of us by making us go through some flogging and military drills.
They radioed their base and asked for a truck to come pick us up , they asked us to sit down by the roadside , we were covered in sand , and cars were just driving by, they probably thought we were criminals.
I said a prayer in "calm desperation" i said "God , i don't want to sound like a p**** right now , but we could really use some help"
A couple of mins later , their commander shows up, and asks what happened.
The soldiers told their version and we told ours.
He crouched before us and said "guys just tell me the truth , even if you are thieves i will know how to deal with it" said it in Yoruba.
My Yoruba sounds funny so Seun took over , he explained that we are photographers , touring the country and we mean no harm"
He asked me to stand up and show him what i recorded , they had previously threatened to break my camera and all , if they had, we wont have had any evidence of our innocence.
I showed him, he took me to a corner and said "Look at these handcuffs, we would have carried you guys off to the police station and locked you up .... and you know say police case no dey end"
We walked back to where we were sat and looked at Aham, he said "If not for my Yoruba brothers , you people would've gone to jail, iwo omo ibo" . He chuckled a little and asked us to get into his car. He dropped us off at a place where we could get a cab , and that was it , We somehow escaped getting "missing" or wrongfully detained ...
I just hope Nigeria will get better, but the thing is , its not enough to hope, we all have to stop complaining and start doing something to fix this country, because if we fail , its our kids that will suffer it , and i for one can't bare the thought of that .
I've tried as much as i can to chronicle our experiences so far. I've cut out a lot of important stuff but , i'm sure this post is already long enough .
The motivation to write this came from one Mr Babarinde Bamidele a budding Photographer. He told me he had read our story , and it was really inspiring, he said it gave him hope. He asked why i had'nt blogged recently , I've not had time, i said, but there was urgency in his voice.
I shut up and put this together for whoever needs hope, whoever has doubts about chasing dreams, that person that is down on luck ..
Listen... the truth is , it will get worse before it gets better , but when it does get better ..... mehn , the feeling is indescribable .
And from all of us here at Orbit Imagery ...
Thank You For Staying With Us .
And May All That You Hope For , Come To Pass..
Watch out for our upcoming workshop.. its going to be mad ..
HAVE AN AWESOME DAY .
Orbit Imagery
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